Training at 50 yards or greater distances with your defensive carry handgun — or thinking you’re going to end a fight this way — is unreasonable. But if you ever need to, it’s important to know what your capabilities are and what’s the best way to achieve the results you’ll need.

Long-Distance Shooting

When and why might you need to shoot at an unreasonable distance with your concealed carry handgun? It’s become important because of active shooter incidents.

It’s extremely unlikely that you would ever need to defend yourself as an individual against a bad guy with a gun who is 50 or more yards away. Instead you would get behind cover or take up a barricade position. If the bad guy comes up and engages, then you’re shooting at close quarters.

But here’s a situation when you might have to do long-distance shooting: if you are trying to defend family members or others who are under attack from an active shooter in an open environment. In this case you need to know what your capabilities are.

Techniques of Shooting at Unreasonable Distances

Rather than shooting at a bad guy from 50 yards away, would you rather run 40 yards to get closer and engage him from there? No, because if he’s shooting into a crowd, he can get off a lot of shots in the time it takes you to run 40 yards.

Rob Pincus teaches this long-distance shooting in his advanced handgun training classes, and he teaches students to come up to more of an Isosceles-style position rather than the natural lowered center of gravity position. You can control yourself and your shots more with your skeletal frame in this position, though the tradeoff is that you cannot control recoil as well. This is a worthwhile tradeoff because it will help you make accurate shots at extreme distances.

Factors that influence which Kydex outside the waistband holster you prefer include Kydex quality, ride height and cant. Rob Pincus presents another issue that isn’t talked about as much: the percentage of the gun’s profile that is off centerline and being pressed up against the body. When a greater percentage of the gun presses on

Brain Sabol discusses the importance of defensive firearms training for a 360 degree world, even on a typical square range. Brian offers some ideas for how you can train more realistically even when your live-fire options don’t include 360 degrees.

Ankle Holsters offer one unique advantage for defensive firearms carry, as they place your defensive tool in a location that most people do not think to look. Danny Pieratti prefers ankle carry and demonstrates proper presentation from that position in this video.

Instructor Don Edwards discusses and demonstrates the differences between shooting with a bipod and shooting from an improvised rest. Both methods can dramatically increase deviation control, but the improvised rest techniques are much more versatile and universal.